Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/381

 9" s. xii. NOV. v, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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not so long ago in which a naval officer insisted on the owner of a yacht hauling down the Union flag which had been hoisted. And a case occurred within my remembrance in an Indian military cantonment which seemed to support the view that the flag is regarded as an official symbol. A civilian resident hoisted the Union flag on a flagstaff attached to his house. The general ordered him to haul the flag down. The civilian demurred whereupon he was arrested and marched off, under a corporal's guard, to the military prison. In an action subsequently brought by the prisoner against the general, the court upheld the action of the military authorities. It may be added that, quite recently, the editor of the Times, in a note appended to the letter of a correspondent, pointed out that, under the Order in Council of 7 August, 1869, " the flag to be used by H.M. Consular Officers to distinguish their residences on shore is the Union flag." Although it is not advanced that this order prohibits the use of this same flag by non- official residents, it will be clear that if it became a general practice for the British non-official inhabitants to fly the Union, the residence of H.B.M. Consul would not be so distinguished. J. H. RIVETT-CARNAC.

Schloss Rothberg, Switzerland.

GENIUS : ITS MANIFESTATIONS (9 th S. xii. 244). May I be forgiven if I confess to finding MR. YARDLEY'S meditation under the above heading not particularly illuminative, and if I question in particular his ipse dixit

that "a man cannot be a man of genius

in two different ways " 1 Was not Julius Csesar a threefold genius, as lawgiver, as general, and as prose writer 1 I believe, too, that contemporary accounts regard Leonardo da Vinci as being as great in applied ma the matics as he was in art. A competent criti< has seen in St. Ignatius Loyola not only a genius in organization, but " the very flowei of mysticism." Men of genius are so feu that it is perhaps unsafe to generalize abou' them. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

ASH : PLACE-NAME (9 th S. xii. 106, 211, 291) I think names beginning with Ash an peculiarly difficult and slippery, as there are three possible origins of Ash- as a prefix These are : (1) A.-S. cesc, an ash - tree ; (2 A -S. uEsc, Ash, as a proper name ; (3) A.-S sEsca, Ashe, as a pet-name dependent o~ names beginning with No. 2.

In the case of Asham, the derivation from (1) is absurd ; trees do not live in homes The derivation from (2) is unlikely, as th gen. form ^Esces would have been usec

rhich might be expected to give a modern 3rm Ashesham. And hence the most likely erivation is really from sE&ca, after all, as [ie gen. form sEscan-hdm might easily suffer eduction. Indeed, the D.B. form Esse- uggests E. Ash-e. reduced form of A.-S. Esc-an ; else what is the good of the second e ? We may, however, refer to No. 1 such descriptive" names as Ash-ford, Ash-bourne, Ash-hurst. And we may remember that the "L.-S. jEsc, as a name, had reference to a 'spear," which was so called because made f ash- wood. We thus come back to the ree at last ; but we may as well be accurate. WALTER W. SKEAT.

COUNT DE BRUHL (9 th S. xii. 189, 275, 331). -When writing the reply at p. 331, I doubted 'D.N.B.V date 1772, but left it without comment, trusting some reader would notice and explain the mystery. The reply at p. 275 shows that the Gentleman's Maga- ine is in error in ascribing the father's chess ikill to his son. It would have been extra- rdinary indeed if Morphy and Paulsen had Deen outdone by Bruhl, who would have )een incredibly precocious to have tackled Philidor when himself only three or four years of age. The error in G.M. does not appear to have been corrected, or if it has, I have failed to find the correction in the volumes for 1855 and 1856.

ADRIAN WHEELER.

George Bruhl, of Chingford, who was born 23 December, 1768, would indeed have been an infant prodigy if he had been " the lead- ing amateur in a new chess club about 1772," when he was four years old ! The Gentle- man's Magazine made a mistake in attributing to him, instead of to his father, Hans Moritz, Graf von Briihl, the honour of having been the principal antagonist of Philidor.

R. MARSHAM-TOWNSHEND.

In a diary kept early in the last century I find such entries as " Count Bruhl came here on his road from Pet worth." The reference is, no doubt, to George, Count Bruhl, whose mother was Alicia, Countess Dowager of Egremont. He can hardly have been a cele- brated chess-player "about 1772," as your correspondent MR. WHEELER assumes, he being then aged three years. H N.

ADAM THE CARTHUSIAN AND ' THE TWELVE PROFITS OF TRIBULATION ' (9 th S. xii. 184, 301). Owing to accidental circumstances, I omitted in my note at the first reference to mention that : The Twelve Profits ' is included in Caxton's volume to which the name of ' Book of Divers Ghostly Matters ' has been